Despite advances in personnel, technology, and force protection, war fighters remain vulnerable to blast wounds, burns, and multiple penetrating injuries not usually encountered in civilian settings. There is a fundamental need to deploy skilled personnel equipped with advanced technology to provide medical and surgical attention as close as possible to the point of injury for a soldier in the battlefield and civilians in a remote location or during natural or manmade disasters. Although war surgery is aimed to treat combat casualties at far forward locations and under austere conditions continues to save lives, the nature of battlefield injuries shortens the “golden hour” in which highly skilled medical attention is required to stabilize the soldier.
One of the major problems in the military and its integrated health services support system to triage, treat, evacuate, and return soldiers to duty is the occasional mismatch between the type of injury and the type of surgeon available to treat it. For example, a heart surgeon may be required to perform a craniotomy. Telemedicine in general and telerobotic surgery in particular are a means to mediate the narrow spectrum of available front line surgical expertise.
There has gone unmet a need for improved methods that provide one or more of the needs indicated above, for example robust telerobotic capabilities so an expert surgeon could perform critical steps of an operation from the continental U.S. or other desired location while the soldier or other patient is located anywhere around the globe.
The present systems and methods, etc., provide these and/or other advantages. Present systems and methods, etc., extend the spectrum of surgical expertise to a level appropriate for the type and nature of battlefield wounds. The present systems and methods, etc., also extend to any desired area of surgery including those well beyond the military arena.